Trump Judge Pick Spread Anti-Muslim Pig Blood Bullet Myth
Published in The Daily Beast
Years before Trump brought it to national attention on the campaign trail, Menashi recounted the myth in a book review he wrote for the Hoover Institution Policy Review in 2002.
In Menashi’s telling, Pershing’s forces dipped bullets in pig fat and wrapped corpses in pigskin before burial in “a devastating contamination according to Muslim law,” Menashi writes. He quotes one U.S. officer reportedly telling the terrorists, “You’ll never see Paradise,” thus dashing their hopes of martyrdom.
“Pershing’s approach is probably no longer in the army’s counterterrorism repertoire, but the result was that guerrilla violence ended,” Menashi concludes, lamenting, “The American response to Islamic extremism has not always been so harsh—or as effective.”
“It’s deeply troubling that he pushed the myth that countless historians have debunked,” says Dan Goldberg, legal director at the advocacy group Alliance for Justice. “The job of a federal judge is to evaluate evidence, and here we have someone up for a judgeship willing to spread unsupportable information that is so prejudicial toward Muslims.”